Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

This is the place to discuss any general CB radio related topics. Getting started, installations, operation etc.
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Admiral
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Admiral »

ghost123uk wrote: Also, I was surprised when they decided to drop the requirement for a CB licence in 2006.
I wonder what the rationale was behind that decision?
It cost more to administer than they collected, therefore not economically viable.
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by ghost123uk »

mof000 wrote: When they dropped the CB licence I half expected them to introduce a "Computer licence"
Aye, bearing in mind what The Admiral said above =
Admiral wrote:I personally think that the British Government initially were anti-CB because they didn't want free communication between the great unwashed, it was a media that could generate communities of anti-establishment tendencies and could encourage free speech, which although a democratic right, was unhealthy in their eyes as we were supposed to toe the line of official media sources which were generally controlled by the Government.
Well we now have unfettered access to communal free speech via the internet, well in most of the free world, not in China, obviously :wtf:
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by WeatherWatcher »

Aside from our bit of fun on this thread, I must admit that there seems to be a lot to think about. The comments below are just my thoughts and I will admit that I may have missed important points.
CB in the naughty days was an American Import sometimes using Combi antennae that were Car Broadcast receive with a black box for CB transmit.
The Italians (Bremi and Zetagi) seemed to be the main source of UK naughty bits.
I remember the first legal sets and think the change to FM probably helped with interference reduction. Yes I had a licence until I got my Ham ticket and have never listened to 27Mhz since.
From my memory the UK has only legally had 40 channels (ok we also had the brief spell of 934) and then sets were fitted with the euro channels as well. SSB coming back and the greater deregulation is probably a good thing for the hobby.
I can also see PMR being used as the new naughty CB with the influx of Chinese radios - there may be clamp downs on users due to other factors, the 70cms ham band is under used but is a Secondary allocation due commercial use https://www.thersgb.org/services/bandplans/#21
Above 440Mhz you need to look at Ofcom to see who is allocated what.
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by mof000 »

mof000 wrote:"Also, I was surprised when they decided to drop the requirement for a CB licence in 2006.
I wonder what the rationale was behind that decision?"

When they dropped the CB licence i half expected them to introduce a "Computer licence"
Fess up who edited my post?
I'll pay whatever i think it's worth...:-)
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Admiral »

Compared to some members here I got into CB fairly late on, 1980, (I've told this yarn before so hit the back button if you've read it elsewhere) one sunny Sunday afternoon I was on 10m (10m was raging in the summer of 1980, best ever in my lifetime) and getting some desensing, not horribly, but noticeable, the nearest known station was a good 3 miles away so rather odd even if he was on the band too (and I was worried if he was because I wasn't licensed to work 10m at the time), I was using a commercial FT-ONE at the time which was pretty much the dogs danglies (but they didn't come out until 1981 you may say, well you could have them imported from Japan in 1980 for the price of a small family car, I was single at the time and had a decent job so could afford it, not now) so after naively flicking through all the ham bands I eventually found an end stop signal on 11m, so I went around the houses and found the offending twig, banged on their door rather crossly and got invited in for a cup of tea, and we became best mates for 16 years until his sad early demise due to diabetes. I got hooked on CB thereafter making ten fold the friends I made on the ham bands, and proper people too. My FT-ONE had the FM board so moved onto the muppets seamlessly, then got an offer for more than the Yaesu was worth and started buying and selling 11m sets.
So basically, if it weren't for CB then I would have probably ditched TXing soon after the 1980 sunspot peak and regressed back to SWL, after a million house moves and nearly 40 years I'm now Facebook friends with three of my old CB chums, sadly we're too far apart to rekindle an on air chat, and only one of them still does CB, the other two jacked it in in the 90's, so the tinterwebby has stepped in to keep us in touch.
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Buick Mackane »

Admiral wrote:Compared to some members here I got into CB fairly late on, 1980, (I've told this yarn before so hit the back button if you've read it elsewhere) one sunny Sunday afternoon I was on 10m (10m was raging in the summer of 1980, best ever in my lifetime) and getting some desensing, not horribly, but noticeable, the nearest known station was a good 3 miles away so rather odd even if he was on the band too (and I was worried if he was because I wasn't licensed to work 10m at the time), I was using a commercial FT-ONE at the time which was pretty much the dogs danglies (but they didn't come out until 1981 you may say, well you could have them imported from Japan in 1980 for the price of a small family car, I was single at the time and had a decent job so could afford it, not now) so after naively flicking through all the ham bands I eventually found an end stop signal on 11m, so I went around the houses and found the offending twig, banged on their door rather crossly and got invited in for a cup of tea, and we became best mates for 16 years until his sad early demise due to diabetes. I got hooked on CB thereafter making ten fold the friends I made on the ham bands, and proper people too. My FT-ONE had the FM board so moved onto the muppets seamlessly, then got an offer for more than the Yaesu was worth and started buying and selling 11m sets.
So basically, if it weren't for CB then I would have probably ditched TXing soon after the 1980 sunspot peak and regressed back to SWL, after a million house moves and nearly 40 years I'm now Facebook friends with three of my old CB chums, sadly we're too far apart to rekindle an on air chat, and only one of them still does CB, the other two jacked it in in the 90's, so the tinterwebby has stepped in to keep us in touch.
Nice story me auld mucker. But tell the truth, You were actually using a fidelity 1000 converted to ten metres, Thats why you were getting interference from a station three miles away. Saying it was an FT-ONE is just to make ya sound more exotic :D
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Admiral »

As it happens, I did have a quantity of them, branded as Lake Manxman 850, I used to buy in semi-quantity from the IOM and re-distribute them, for some unknown reason they sold like hot cakes on a winter afternoon and I couldn't get a second batch, just for posterity, I bought them at £33 a unit of 300 and sold at £59, and although they were crap I didn't have a single return, returns were expected at around 5% so made an extra 5% profit on them bad boys, so that was the mark up of an intermediary, so now you can guess what Halfords and Comet were making on their £99 sets as a major buyer, I'm guessing they made around £75 per set profit.
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Admiral »

And, speaking of Halfords, I bought a PSU off them in circa 1981 as I needed one quick, it was a right dog giving hum on RX and TX, took it back and the crunt said he had to send it away to be repaired, it was only about 3 days old and I suggested he just gave me another one, oh no, not company policy, anyway, I had stuck a UV mark on as I was (am) paranoid, it took a whole 6 weeks to 'repair', and guess what, the UV mark wasn't on the one I got back, to their credit the new one did work well, so fair play to them, they did make good in the end, but it would have been so much easier to replace it there and then, and I haven't set foot in a Halfords store in 36 years.
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Buick Mackane »

A lot of CB power supplies in the 80s were lethal, I remember one called ''power house'' blue coloured i think it was, shocking!!
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by timbob58 »

''power house'' blue coloured,, ahaha think i still have one some where ,well just the case ripped the guts out of it years ago
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Oggy »

Buick Mackane wrote:A lot of CB power supplies in the 80s were lethal, I remember one called ''power house'' blue coloured i think it was, shocking!!
I bought a second hand CTVR 5 five amp PSU in 1980 and it buzzed like stink, I took the cover off and tried putting strips of rubber between the case and chassis, it was a right pain, I regularly booted it to try and stop it "Mid Copy".
It's still somewhere in the loft. :o
I was the kiddy at school having a five amp supply my Mates all had three amps :lol:
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by WeatherWatcher »

Any one remember the old Binatone rig that looked like a phone handset and had a remote box with the electronics in it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-QjdqGuvIE
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by Admiral »

timbob58 wrote:''power house'' blue coloured,, ahaha think i still have one some where ,well just the case ripped the guts out of it years ago
I had one at 3amp and it blew up, literally, I had a demo Colonel FR360 as I was interested in buying a batch (which I did and regretted, that's another story), the 360 was supposed to be rated at 4w AM and 12pep SSB, well, unbeknown to me, the importer tweaked the demo models, so this thing was chucking out 11w on AM, keyed up, lights very dim, then bang, and I really mean bang. Fortunately it just took out the inline fuse on the rig, but the smell in my kitchen from the fried PSU lingered for days, no repair attempted, straight in the bin.
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by stanogs68 »

RF burns used to squelch when he walked !!
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Re: Cb radio from the 1970's to 2016

Post by stanogs68 »

sorry i posted in wrong place :oops:
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